55-0

55-0. That’s the score from a girls’ high school softball game in North Carolina last week. When West Charlotte visited Central Cabarrus, Central pounded West, putting 30 runs on the board in the first inning and 25 in the second, before the game was called.

The Central coach was suspended for two games, and the athletic director of West Charlotte said the game was the worst display of sportsmanship he’d ever seen. Apparently, this story is starting to make news because some parents of some of the kids on the West squad took great umbrage at the fact that their kids were blown out so badly in this contest. I can already envision the questions and statements that must be making the rounds: “How will this hurt our children?” “What kind of sportsmanship does that teach?” “Jill is going to be psychologically damaged by this devastating blow! We can’t have that!”

You know what’s worse than losing 55-0? Losing 55-0 and having your parents make such a stink about it that it becomes national news, making you and your friends fodder for every sports talk show and late night monologue around.

As a parent to one son who’s already gone through Little League, junior- and high school baseball, and to another who’s presently going through Pop Warner football, I’m very well acquainted with sporting events at this level. Do you know what a little kid says after 55-0 loss? “Bummer. I hate that we lost. Do we still get ice cream?” They don’t lose sleep over it. They don’t hold onto it. They don’t cry into their pillows at night. They get over it, as long as the can still stop at Scoopy Doos for cones after the game. Even as teenagers, they care about losing – but they get over it pretty easily. They go from the ball field to the locker room to the pizza joint without missing a beat. You know who doesn’t get over losses like this? Their parents.

But what those parents forget is that losses like 55-0 are a part of life, both in sports and in the real world. Most lopsided college game in history? 220-0. NFL: 77-0. It happens.

I hear that there’s talk of trying to legislate against such supposedly unsportsmanlike blowouts. What will that accomplish? What are you trying to teach kids with that? That you can legislate “fairness?” Guess what. Life isn’t fair. We see that life is unfair every single day, in so many ways. A boy in New York gets an infection in his tooth that spreads to his brain and winds up killing him. Another boy in New York, crossing the street to get money for the ice cream truck, is struck by a hit-and-run driver and dies the next morning. No, kids. Life isn’t fair at all -- not by a long shot.

But through sports, we can teach our children how to deal with the unfairness that life throws our way. My youngest was involved in a football game last season where they got blown out 36-6, and it wasn’t even as close as that score suggests. The coaches took it hard, and as a result, all the kids took it hard right after the game. But you know what I told my son? “It’s a tough loss. But it’s not the end of the world. You will get over it. Just remember how this feels, and do your best and play your hardest so you can avoid this feeling next week.” And you know what? By the time we got home, he was ready to get out of his football gear and go out and ride his bike. He dealt with the loss, processed it, and then let it go. That’s what we’re supposed to do in life, isn’t it?

Life, just like sports, deals you losses. Some are huge. Some are devastating. Some are inconsequential. But if our kids don’t learn how to deal with a loss on the baseball diamond or the football field, how will they cope with a loss that’s far more significant?

This spring, I joined a men’s basketball league with several of my friends and cronies. It’s our first year in the league, our first year playing together, and we’re going up against teams that have played together for over a decade. Not surprisingly, we’re getting blown out every single week because the teams we’re playing against are far more familiar with each other than we are and, quite frankly, are also more talented. We’ve yet to win a game this season and, in our best game so far, we lost by 32 points. But I’m happy that my youngest comes down to watch us play because he’s seeing the qualities that each one of the guys on our squad displays: we do not give up, we maintain good sportsmanship, we play hard from start to finish despite double-digit deficits though most of the game, and we shake hands at the end. We do that because that’s how each one of us learned to play the game when we were kids. Never give up. Keep trying. Play like you expect to win, and if you lose this one, come back and win the next one. And always play with your head up, even when you’re getting blown out.

We can -- and should -- teach our kids these qualities, attributes, and mind-sets through the vehicle of sports, because they will serve our children well down the road of the rest of their lives. If we teach our children that we should pass laws to make sure you get treated fairly by outlawing 55-0 blow-outs, aren’t our kids going to be looking for such laws in every area of their lives?

How we deal, and how we are taught to deal, with adversity, and unfairness, and losses, as children, sets the stage for how we will deal with those same things in the future. Maybe the folks in North Carolina, and all of the sporting parents in the country, should try to remember that.